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User blog:ArenLuxon/Why I absolutely love School Days
Why I absolutely love School Days Haters gonna hate When you scroll through the reviews, basically everyone seems to hate School Days. There are a surprisingly large amount of active haters who are capable of filling up entire pages with how much they hate the series. Whether it’s about how the story went downhill: It started off fine, the whole love triangle story wasn't very unique or anything, but it entertained... It was fun at first to see this clueless pervert fail at getting a girl. The problem was when it became more of a love hexagon - And things went downhill from there. The story became difficult to watch due to the idiotic and retarded main character. Or the characters: The characters in this anime are seriously some of the dumbest people I have ever seen. Makoto especially - after watching about 5 episodes I wanted to smash his face in. His idiotic expressions, his whiny sped voice, everything about him. I hated it all. I hated the way he looked, the way he talked, and everything he did. My hatred for this character is unparalleled to any other characters I might have ever hated in my life. The other characters were mainly idiotic girls that for some reason couldn't get enough of this whiny faced idiot. Or the sound: It didn't really suit the series considering how dark and idiotic it became. The opening was way too happy in contrast to the story. Some clearly put a lot of thought in their review: i hate this anime so much, i bet the creator is just the same with the main characther i bet, how cruel is this main characther the young man got a nice girl but the young man betray her and get a new woman for his happiness how stupid is he, and then the innocent girl get betray too by her boyfriend friends and get fuck by his friends without any fault, what in the hell, this anime is so bad, without morale, how anime can be cruel like this , im so poor with this innocent girl, i hope the creator die While others just didn’t bother: I hate this. Or my all time favorite: 11 episodes of the anime seen I was going to write this review when I finished the series, but honest to god, I don't think one episode is going to change my opinion about this anime. Lovers gonna love Some people do seem to like it. The story of School Days is extremely interesting. Unlike most anime, it goes over problems that most wouldn't even dare to touch. But this is why many hate it. Unlike most harem anime, it does not focus on the happy parts of a relationship. School Days' uniqueness is what turns people away. Like most fans of this anime, I consider it a deconstruction of the harem genre. As another user put it so beautifully "It is not easy to fairly review a title that takes basic human decency, crumples it up, proceeds to piss on it, before lighting it all on fire, and finally starts to barbeque fetuses over the flames of innocence lost." However, (s)he said it as if that's a bad thing. I wouldn't recommend this anime to the faint-hearted, it's one of, if not the, most disturbing things I've ever seen (including the pianist and hobo with a shotgun.) By the way, if School Days is the most disturbing thing you’ve ever seen, watch euphoria and then get back to me, noob. The big question So, here comes the obvious question. Why would any sane person spend his time filling entire pages with venomous critique? It’s rather strange if you think about it. If you don’t like something, well, move on. You won’t like everything, deal with it. It’s only a fictional story, right? Right? Well, this is the first problem people have with it. It is not a beautiful lie. The events in School Days could happen in real live, and they do. This is a harsh truth most people don’t want to accept. You really think no girl would ever fake a pregnancy? Or kill her love rival? Well think again. People will go pretty far once they are in love. “All is fair in love and war”. Another reason would be “I wouldn't recommend this anime to the faint-hearted”. Everyone has a line. Some people just don’t like horror because they are faint-hearted. The problem is that School Days is messing with your expectations. People go in expecting a generic love comedy and suddenly things take a darker turn. So they go like “I didn’t sign up for this” and then they start bitching. This is a legitimate complaint, but it’s a problem School Days could never overcome no matter what. If you know how it was going the end, you wouldn’t be shocked. And if you’re not shocked, they kinda missed their point. They need to take an unexpected turn and spiral down into madness to make their point. Thirdly, we have casual viewers. If you’re a casual viewer, then it’s easy to hate School Days. Because School Days is something experimental, something that goes against the flow, something not like anything else out there. And casual viewers don’t like that. They want something like everything else. Something they can watch with their brains on stand-by. Something that doesn’t challenge them. So they go in expecting that. Expecting a generic love comedy with all nice characters, and naturally, they are disappointed. What if-series? School Days is a “what if”-series. It’s a story that asks the question everyone else either ignores or doesn’t bother answering. Every galge-gamer or harem-anime watcher has asked himself “What if I dated all the girls simultaneously?” Usually this is impossible. Once you pick a girl, you can’t pursue the others. The games are all pre-programmed to make this impossible. No serious game has ever done this before. But School Days does answer this question. What if we made every character terrible? What if all guys were sociopaths who don’t care about others and think with the wrong head? And what if all the girls were bitches having absolutely no problem using their body to manipulate those weak men? Or prudes who can’t even hold their boyfriend’s hand? No one would ever put those kind of people in a romance high school setting. Yet School Days does it and they do it quite well. Who are you really hating? Now, I’m not gonna talk about the deconstruction of the harem genre, since that’s been done a lot, and it’s not really a hard point to make. You can’t fool around with multiple girls and expect them to just be okay with that. There we go, point made, moving on. School Days is more than that. I’m gonna try to make a very strange and probably quite controversial point. Just bear with me, you don’t have to agree with me. People don’t actually hate Makoto. Wow, dude. Are you insane? Hold on, not done yet. They hate themselves. This sounds a bit strange (massive understatement), but bear with me. They hate the characters for being stupid, sexist, dense and all that. But they are just fictional characters. Why would you even bother? When you realized that you could’ve dropped it. No one is forcing you to watch anything let alone voice your opinion. Also, no one is actually thinking anyone will change his/her opinion based on a hate comment, right? Spitting venom doesn’t change anything. Arguing with people who won’t ever change their mind is pointless. Yet people seem to care. Lots and lots of people scream loudly (in caps lock) how much they hate this series. Maybe they scream, so they can’t hear that small voice deep inside. That voice that says that maybe, just maybe, those fictional characters are very real. We all have our bad sides. Sure, we don’t just screw around with everyone, but, given the chance, would we? If you were perfectly honest with yourself, what would you have done in his situation? Your ‘girlfriend’, who was amazing in every way when she was still a distant dream, turns out to be a prude who can’t even hold hands with you. Not only that, she’s basically the hottest girl around. And while you are exploding with sexual frustration, a dozen girls come up and offer you sex, no strings attached, well that’s how it looks at least. Would you just decline all of them? If you were perfectly honest, I think most people would have to admit they aren’t certain they would be capable of doing the right thing. As Dumbledore put it “Soon we’ll have to choose between the right way, and the easy way.” I think most people would be tempted to pick the easy way. It’s hard to admit that maybe, just maybe, to a certain extent, we would have followed the same path as Makoto. The easiest way to deal with this insecurity most of us have is of course to pretend it doesn’t exist. And if an anime reminds us of that, well then, obviously, it’s a terrible anime which should burn in hell. People hate to admit this, but sometimes, their thoughts are unacceptable. Sometimes, even their actions are unacceptable. I’ll admit it, I’ve done things I’m not proud of, I’m sure everyone has. In that sense, I’m not as different from Makoto as I would like to be. And maybe that is the problem people have with School Days. They would love to say how they and everyone else is different from them. That we do care about others, we don’t screw around with everyone and we don’t manipulate others. But they know that isn’t entirely true. But we all have to live with that. We’ll all have to live with the simple fact that we are not that different from them as we would like. Most people prefer the beautiful lie, but School Days learns us that maybe, just maybe, giving people the hard truth every once in a while is the right thing to do. You’re supposed to identify with the characters. Usually this works out fine, cause the character represents who you want to be. Who wouldn’t want to be the hero that saves the world and gets the hot girl? Problem is, what if you start identifying with a character which highlights your flaws and throws them back in your face? That might be very hard to take, especially if you doubt yourself, which lots of people do. Visual novel, making a choice Probably the most interesting thing about the visual novel is the control you have, or the illusion of control actually. Despite the fact that there are more than twenty endings to choose from and that you can pick the route you want, there’s not a single route where no one gets hurt. Makoto will always be indecisive and sex-addicted no matter what you do. The game gives you the illusion that you can control what will happen, but it’s destined to go wrong. Tragedy will come no matter what. Sure, sometimes there’s a happy ending, but there’s always someone left behind at some point. Even the famous harem ending isn’t all roses. The consequences of your choices are hard to predict. At one point you’re at the swimming pool and you can make a comment about Kotonoha’s overly large breasts. If you pick that choice, Makoto will proceed to grab her boob and she will slap him. Of course, there’s no way you could know he would do that. But that’s how things usually go. No one can predict the consequences of their choices, but we have to make them anyway. Life is simple, you make choices and you don’t look back. A lot of movies go on about this “we do have a choice” thing. You know, the idea that there is always a choice. You can always do the right thing. In School Days, you can’t. Sometimes you have to pick between two awful choices, or you don’t get to pick at all. You’re sitting in front of your screen watching Makoto screw up and you’re like “give me a choice, give me the option to stop him”. Sometimes they give you that choice, sometimes they don’t, but it will go wrong anyway. Because sometimes we don’t have a choice. Sometimes, the choice is made for us. That’s a hard truth, and hard truths don’t sell. Inherent value of experimental work Even if I didn’t like School Days, I would still think it’s an important series. Episode one million forty-seven of pokemon isn’t going to change much no matter how good you think it is. Anime costs a lot of money so consequently, there’s a lot of pressure to make what will sell anyway. But a world where no one dares taking a risk would be pretty dull. Unless we want to drown ourselves in cliche anime we need people who are willing to take some risks. So whether you personally liked it or not, any work that goes against the flow is inherently valuable because it clears the way for more diversity. Last point Originally, there was one more page in this review, but I’m not gonna include that one because it’s super personal. But I don’t want to pretend that this page never existed. Let me just say that some people, and I’m certainly not alone in this, care a lot about a fictional work cause they see some part of their own lives reflected in it. Maybe their girlfriend looks a lot like one of the characters, or the main character is facing a problem that is somehow similar to their own problems. There’s a difference between constructive criticism and spitting venom. For some people something is not just a work of fiction, but a whole lot more than that. So please keep this in mind before you start typing in caps lock to proclaim how terrible something is. Signing off now, Aren Luxon, May 25 Category:Blog posts